Uninhabited or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been in use for several years for various purposes including carrying sensors, reconnaissance, and communications. Some unmanned vehicles are useful for flying into areas in which a manned aircraft would be at risk due to enemy fire, airborne contaminants, and other dangers. Examples are found in U.S. Pat. No. 6,626,398 to Cox et al. and in U.S. Pat. No. 6,082,671 to Michelson.
In the mid 1990's, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) funded development of micro-air vehicles. DARPA defined micro-air vehicles as being six inches or fewer in length, width, and height. The term micro-air vehicle can also refer to flying devices which are smaller or larger than this approximate size.
Examples of small propellor driven flying devices are found in “The NRL MITE Air Vehicle”, Proceedings of the Bristol RPV/AUV Systems Conference, 2001, by Kellogg, J., Bovais, C., Dahlburg, J., Foch, R., Gardner, J., Gordon, D., Hartley, R., Kamgar-Parsi, B., McFarlane, H., Pipitone, F., Ramamurti, R., Sciambi, A., Spears, W., Srull, D., and Sullivan, C.
Some other examples of small unmanned vehicles are disclosed in “Nonconventional Aerodynamics for Micro-UAVs”, Proc. 16th International UAV Systems Conference, Bristol, UK, April 2001 by Kellogg, J., Bovais, C., Cylinder, D., Dahlburg, J., Foch, R., Platzer, M., Ramamurti, R., and Sandberg, W. C. and in “Development and Testing of Unconventional Micro Air Vehicle Configurations”, Proc. of Unmanned/Unlimited Conference, AIAA, September 2003 by Kellogg, J., Bovais, C., Cylinder, D., Dahlburg, J., Foch, R., Ramamurti, R., Sandburg, W. C., Gardner, J., Srull, D., Piper, G., Vaiana, P., and Kahn, A.